How College Affects Students: A Third Decade of Research

Pascarella and Terenzini, two of the most cited researchers in higher education, provide a wealth of information on the impact of college on students. Both volumes of How College Affects Students (published in 1991 and 2005, respectively) cover a variety of critically important student outcomes such as, cognitive and intellectual growth, psychosocial change, moral development, and career and economic impacts of college. This book is one of the most cited and well-known works in the fields of higher education and student affairs. If you want to know about the empirical evidence on important student outcomes, there is no better book to reference. This book does not cover anecdotal conclusions about the impact of college on students - it only reviews what is known scientifically about how college affects students. A MUST READ for all higher education professionals.

Book in great condition. Don't remember if I purchased it new, but there were yellow highlights. Very neat and not distracting. I would have highlighted the information, anyway. I refer this site to my students, colleagues, and peer students. Thanks for being available. Texts are far too expensive. The schools need competition. And I work for a university!!

This book is a review and synthesis of literally thousands of studies on how students grow and develop during college. The authors have a gift for integrating multiple findings (even those that conflict with each other) and boiling it down to just the main conclusions and ideas. That being said, they are summarizing a LOT of information. This is not the type of book that most people would read cover-to-cover in a few sittings. I have used it as a reference, reading the summaries near the back of the book, skimming sections, and then carefully reading only the chapters that pertain most closely to my interests. The book is quite accessible to readers, but the readability does have a downside. Researchers may be frustrated by the lack of detail and statistical data regarding most of the studies. As thick as this book is, it is a compilation of summaries. However, the comprehensive bilbliography makes it very easy to locate all of the original sources, quickly identifying all major studies on nearly any topic within student development. Overall, this is a comprehensive overview of a decade of journals, books, and presentations, all packed into one long but reader-friendly volume. Those looking for a brief or applied guide to practice may be frustrated or overwhelmed by the scope, but this book should be required reading for anyone who is at all interested in research on student development.